We have split stories / poems on the front page now, via 2 tabs. The default is to load stories. There may be an option coming, to select poems on the home page in your settings. I'm awaiting confirmation.

There's a glitch at the moment where stories are leaking into the poetry section. That will be fixed up soon.

I've sent Gav a message asking him to add a prompt to make it clear you are purposely deleting the entire contents of your inbox, and that the process cannot be undone. It's either that, or we could ask for confirmation by typing in your account password, or something like that. If the button was moved away from the others, fewer accidents might happen too.

We set up http://www.lushpublishing.com/ a few years ago to cater for authors here who wished to publish their novels, on the big publishing sites. Due to being resource constrained, and too tied up with other projects, it hasn't been very active over the last year, and we removed the associated forum we had here too. That will soon be changing.

By far the biggest site to get your novel into, is Amazon, and I'd concentrate your efforts there. Smashwords is a smaller syndication type site, and they have their merits.

There aren't many "lush stories" offered on Amazon, most are standalone novels by some of our authors. We put a couple of anthologies together for promotional purposes, and there are a couple of short stories offered free on Amazon too (they will do a price match at their discretion - putting an ebook into smashwords free can work for that purpose), but that's it.

Are you looking for a publisher, or wish to go the self-publishing route? We are doing a soft re-launch of lush publishing in the coming month or so. If you're looking for the former, and your novel is of the required standard, we'd be happy to look over your draft.

I am delighted to say that this poetry competition was a huge success. It's wonderful to see that the art of contemporary poetry is thriving.

Poetry is perhaps the most subjective of literary art forms. As such, it can be difficult to judge objectively, since poetry in many ways demands more of the readers imagination and involvement.

Our judging panel definitely proved this to be true, with a huge variation in their preferential rankings.

However, 3 of the poems were very well supported across the board. I bring to you the winning entries:

Winner ($100): I Hate You , by avrgblkgrl Second Place (Gold Membership): Exempt , by Possibly Third Place (Silver Membership): Aftermath , by shrpsf

Honourable mentions go to the following authors and their excellent entries:

Ti Amo , by gilrenard My Gift , by ChrissieLecker House of Mirrors , by Delphi Soft Lamps , by elliotlacey31 A Valentine's Fantasia , by playsit Nicola Allows Me One Cliche , by flytoomuch Drive Mad , by TheScheherezadeFeint Kisses On Dew , by adagio_sabadicus One last time , by JWren Your Valentine Gift , by BethanyFrasier The Feast Of Saint Valentine , by Green_Man Two Snowflakes , by SheriPie Flood of Fires , by bigbubblygurlnc

Thank you all for making this poetry competition a great success. We are sure to run another later in the year.

After spending many hours researching, I have a solution which will be implemented in the coming weeks. It will be both useful for surfers as well as helping spider the site more effectively. It will make greater use of our tag database.

I never use them, but I guess search engines follow them. If so, removing them could have a big impact on stories being found through Google and 'friends'. With one 'Next' link on the homepage, only the stories on the second page are one link removed from the homepage. With paged navigation, like it is now, there are many more stories that are one link removed from the homepage. This can have a huge impact on the ranking of those stories.

Interesting point.

However, at the moment, only pages 1-10 and then the last 2 pages are linked. So that's only 12 pages.

Any idea how we could get google to spider the site more deeply? You seem a bit of an expert on these things. Any help always appreciated!

I think it's pretty pointless because you can't use it to work out where you've read up to. If you weren't on site for 2 weeks, there may have been several hundred new submissions since then.

Better would be to have a bookmark of some kind, so when you return, it remembers which story list page you were last on.

Talking of bookmarks, it would be nice to have the same thing at story page level, so when you return, it remembers how far down the page you were. I have seen this at work on other forums, so it should be possible at page level.

While we're here (), I've seen mentioned by many people, the request to have a "Top" button on the story pages. I have seen this on other sites, where there's a "Top" link in a light coloured box, which sits floating in the bottom right of the page, so as not to interfere with the content.

We are going to change the site set up, so that stories only, will be loaded by default on the front page (this is a story site, the bias is being taken away, and that's not ok). Poems will have their own separate tab, so that those who wish to read only poetry, can click the link.

Members will be able to (coding time permitting) choose in their settings, which loads by default on the main page.

I can't think of a better solution. I do enjoy reading quality poetry, however there has to be a balance.

This is primarily an erotic story site. It was designed as such, and remains as such. If it gets to the stage where poetry is taking over, I will take measures.

All joking aside, this has been playing on my mind for a while. The most likely change would be to have story listings shown on the front page, by default. We would add a tab for poetry (still on the front page), so those who wish to view poems, can click the tab and that's all they'll see. Members could choose whichever front page listing set they wish.

Please PM sssh if you need more details on this competition they are running:

If you’re a 50 Shades of Grey fan with a gift for writing short fiction, then Sssh.com’s #Sssh50 “kinky tweet” contest has your name all over it.

Starting Thursday February 5, the challenge is to tell a kinky story in a single tweet, using the hashtag #Sssh50. Contestants have more than one chance to win, as each tweet using the #Sssh50 hashtag counts as a separate entry. Tweet submissions will be accepted through February 22, 2015 at midnight EST. The winner will take home an author signed copy of the 50 Shades of Grey Trilogy.

“We’re giving fans a chance to have some fun and use their creativity for a shot at winning a memorable prize,” said Angie Rowntree, owner of Sssh.com, the web’s premier porn for women site. “Using Twitter as the medium makes it something people can participate in easily. At the same time, the platform requires contestants to be clever and efficient in order to tell their story in short bursts.”

The winner of the #Sssh50 contest will be announced February 24, during the upcoming MindBrowse.com show “50 Shades of Reality: Insights from BDSM Professionals,” which airs live starting at 3p.m. EST.

“People can pack a lot into tweet,” said Lauren MacEwen, from 7 Veils “The #Sssh50 contest gives people the chance to explore erotica in 140 characters. It will be fun to see how creative tweeps get!

All members of the site, who joined prior to 1 Jan 2015, were given 6 months continuation of all the features they have always enjoyed, since joining.

"The Vault", is a new feature, which is available only to "Premium" members. Those are people who have a paid membership, whether it is a Bronze, Silver or Gold Membership.

All authors who contributed stories / poems to the site prior to 1 Jan 2015, were gifted Bronze Memberships, as a thank you. You haven't submitted a story or a poem here, so you weren't gifted the Bronze Membership.

The message you are seeing, "Your account has already been upgraded... " is incorrect. It hasn't been.

Hey Nicola, will Lush be able to drop the time limit on scoring for this one? I know with (I think) the flash erotica comp, it got really frustrating having to wait and wait for the limit to pass to score on stories? Just a thought...

Can you elaborate? I read this 4 times and still don't understand (very long Sunday lunch yesterday...).